In our neck of the woods... Cool Moths

A couple of really cool moths showed up at our house recently. Trish spotted this first creature feeding on the nectar of our marigolds. From a distance, the way it hovers and darts left and right makes it look very much like a hummingbird. In fact, one of its names is hummingbird moth. Officially, its common name is the snowberry clearwing sphinx moth.

The caterpillars of snowberry clearwings are herbivores, feeding on leaves. The adults, though, feed exclusively on flower nectar, which makes them important pollinators. As they feed on flowers, pollen attaches to their body, and then they carry that pollen to other flowers.

This second one—an impressive luna moth—landed on our screen door.

Luna moths have a completely different life cycle compared to clearwing sphinx moths. As adults, sphinx moths feed on nectar, living for a few weeks to a few months. Adult luna moths, by contrast, do not eat at all.

Wait—what? They don't eat? It's true. Adult luna moths don't even have a mouth or digestive system. They rely on stored energy from when they were leaf-eating caterpillars. After they emerge from the cocoon as adults, they have only one goal in life... to find a mate and reproduce. They live only a few days to a week. At about midnight, the females release a pheromone that the males can detect from a great distance, and that's how they manage to hook up before they die.